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Cradle to cradle

December 31, 2014

Elizabeth Eason, a Knoxville architect accredited with the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED system, led a community discussion of the book Cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. McDonough and Braungart question the wisdom of "reduce, reuse, recycle" and propose that products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new—either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). (Recorded April 8, 2009)